Love it or hate it, Obamacare became a part of our lives for good this year.

The president’s signature 2010 health care reform law has survived the highest level of challenges, from more than 40 votes to repeal it in Congress, to a Supreme Court challenge, to a presidential election and a government shutdown, all while sporting fairly low approval ratings.

The law faced even more challenges of its own making as it moved from theory to reality this fall. But despite the troubled rollout of HealthCare.gov, Obamacare has started to turn around, with more than 2 million Americans expected to have health insurance by Jan. 1.

“We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit,” Obama said.

But Republicans weren’t ready to give up. In March, a wave of conservatives pushed Congress to defund the law.

May found the House taking its 37th vote to repeal or defund the law. The votes were largely symbolic because any bill was dead on arrival in the Democratically controlled Senate, and Republican leaders made it clear in 2012 they didn’t really believe they could repeal Obamacare.

Still, the votes allowed conservative first-year Republicans to voice their opposition to the still-unpopular Obamacare.

“The constituents that sent me here want my vote recorded, to repeal this poorly crafted, job-killing law,” said Rep. Tom Rice, a Republican from South Carolina.

Conservative activists kept up the pressure on Republican politicians as spring moved to summer, and closer to the law’s Oct. 1 launch date. They focused on a portion of a 2012 Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed governors to decide whether or not to expand Medicaid in their states under Obamacare.

In the summer and fall, the nation split mostly along party lines to expand Medicaid and create states’ own websites for people to shop for private health insurance, making the law’s roll out much more difficult in Republican states.

In September, House leaders could no longer ignore conservative activists calling for an end to Obamacare. Leaders joined with their tea party counterparts in Congress on a plan to defund Obamacare, even if it meant shutting down the government.

In October, the government shut down. Sixteen days later, it reopened without any changes to Obamacare. Speaker John Boehner said: “We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win.”

Facing poll numbers that blamed Republicans for the shutdown, it was now clear to most in the party that the law itself wasn’t going to be ripped from the books.

But that didn’t mean the couldn’t be changed. The federal website to allow Americans to shop for private health insurance launched the same day the government shut down. It performed terribly. Congress held hearings as many Americans’ first experience with the law was a blank screen.

Then, some Americans got cancellation notices in the mail for health insurance policies that didn’t stand up to Obamacare’s strict new guidelines.

CNN later dubbed Obama’s sales pitch “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” the lie of the year.

During the fall and winter, the argument over Obamacare shifted from how to get rid of it to how to fix it.

The Obama administration spent the holidays tweaking the law through executive action, pushing back deadlines and allowing Americans to stay on cancelled plans longer.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., began coming up with plans of their own. Ryan plans to announce his when Congress reconvenes in 2014.

Through all the drama in D.C., an increasing number of people signed up for health insurance. The Dec. 24 deadline for enrollment by the new year came and went, and it’s projected that by Jan. 1, two million more Americans will have health insurance.

That’s far less than what the Obama administration had hoped, but the more the law becomes a reality in people’s lives, the harder it is to take away.

“It’s no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told the New York Times.

The newly cemented law will continue to be a focus for both sides next year. It will be at the center of gubernatorial races, especially in states key to making the law work better.

What path Congress takes toward Obamacare remains to be seen, but after 2013, it’s clear the law is here to stay.